Back in late 2015 Finnish artist Ville Hopponen (Cats on Fire, The New Tigers) assembled an impressive array of fellow musical luminaries to help create his new music project Verandan. He described the process thus;
“I have played music since 1876 but never really written any songs myself it was a slow and meticulous process. The only aim was writing and recording some songs that I could hopefully tolerate even in the future. And also to do this with the best musicians I could find and whose judgement I fully trusted. They really pulled everything together and made it work, contributing all sorts of good ideas.”
The process was clearly successful as those good ideas stem from the undoubted talents of Aleksi Peltonen (Puunhalaaja), Aki Pohjankyrö (Black Twig, Love Sport), Kaarlo Stauffer (Black Twig) and Sampo Seppänen (Sofa Pets, Kynett) and while it might have taken quite a while for the band’s first single to surface, the end product has been well worth the wait. It comes in the form of the sparkling ‘Gold In The Hills’, a deliberative groove filled pop wonder adorned with perfectly subtle and appropriately arranged atmospherics. And the production, done by Hopponen himself, is killer. Despite extending to four minutes things are over all too soon. You may be spewing upon its abrupt ending but at least there’s always the repeat button. Look out for their debut EP on Soliti later this year.
Gold In The Hills
Verandan (FIN)
From the single, ‘Gold In The Hills’, Soliti.
Verandan Facebook
Audio Stream